


Only If For A Night

by verybi_verytired



Category: The Umbrella Academy (Comics), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, Ghost Possession, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Possession, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, no betas we die like men, the mausoleum
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-15 17:35:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18503782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verybi_verytired/pseuds/verybi_verytired
Summary: Klaus was 16 when he was possessed by a ghost for the first time, and he doesn’t remember a thing about it.Written for my 'Bad Things Happen' bingo card but it is a stand-alone fic.





	Only If For A Night

**Author's Note:**

> So, I've thrown myself head first into a new fandom... Oops? 
> 
> I woke up this morning and couldn't get this out of my head. This is probably the quickest I've ever written a fic in my whole life and it probably shows lmfao. 
> 
> Hopefully you enjoy this barely edited mess. Maybe one day I'll fix it up a bit more.
> 
> **Bad Things Happen Prompt:** Ghostly Possession.

The first time Klaus was ever possessed by a spirit he was 16, and he didn’t remember it at all.

In fact, all he could remember about that night is having some of Grace’s amazing roast for dinner before being dragged to a mausoleum on the other side of the city. He remembered maybe an hour or two of shaking and crying as grotesque spirits yelled at him, and then all of a sudden he was being put in the car and being driven home.

It was the last time he was ever put in that damn crypt.

So what happened during that ‘training session’ you ask? Well...

~

Klaus, who was _depressingly_ sober after letting Ben talk him into trying to get clean again, had huddled into the corner like usual and pressed his face into his drawn up knees. He was more or less fine for the first 20 or so minutes but after that, the room started to fill with spirits of the dead, drawn to him by his powers. After that, it was like hell had, quite literally, broke loose in the small room and he spent a good two hours crying and screaming as bloody, angry hands reached out for him. They couldn’t touch him, but every time they tried to he felt a numbing cold pass through him and he rubbed his arms raw trying to warm them up. It didn't work.

It was while he was crying and rocking back and forth that it happened. 

He hadn’t meant to make her manifest. In fact, he hadn’t even noticed that his hands were faintly glowing as he cried for Grace or Ben or just _anyone_ to save him.

A woman, who was probably in her early twenties, appeared as if answering his call. She had dark curls, pale skin, and the same green eyes he saw in the mirror every day. She had no visible wounds but she did have a horrifying amount of blood smeared between her thighs, that was mostly hidden by the dress she was wearing.

He only noticed her when the rest of the ghosts suddenly stopped yelling.

He stared at her for a long moment trying to figure out why she was so familiar, before realizing that he had seen her once before. The memory of that night, of one of his failed suicide attempts, was foggy at best but he definitely remembered her face. He thought she had been a hallucination but apparently she hadn’t been. 

They stared at each other for a long moment until the young woman suddenly glided forward and lifted a cold hand to touch his face.

_And holy shit she was **touching** him._

The touch shocked him enough that he screamed and jumped back, accidentally slamming his head into the unforgiving marble wall behind him.

After that he remembers nothing.

After that, his whole body seemed to glow as it floated a few feet off the ground. Without him holding back (and without him being high as a kite) his powers were unrestrained and appeared to draw the dead in. The ghosts, who had been scared off by the manifestation of the young woman, all seemed to decide they wanted a piece of what she had.

She watched as they tried to grab her son, some even managing to hold a corporeal form for a few seconds. She frowned at that, at the bruises they were causing on his pale skin, and how they seemed to be draining him the longer they kept contact.

She stepped forward once again and focused as much as she could, laying her hands on the top of Klaus’ head. When she had been alive she had always been interested in the spiritual world and witchcraft, but she had never gotten the chance to try anything that she had learned about before she died giving birth to her beautiful baby boy so she wasn’t actually sure how she got it to work – was it her who had possessed him or was it him pulling her consciousness into himself? – but either way, she felt herself become solid in a way she hadn’t been in 16 years.

Opening her – his? – eyes she looked down at the body she was now in. She lifted her hand and made a fist, testing her control over Klaus’ body and admiring the faint blue glow that came from his skin. As a ghost she had a deeper understanding of his powers than Klaus did. She could feel how they resonated in him. It was a bit of a trip to both feel herself, and feel how Klaus’ powers perceived her...

_Oh god._

She really needed to stop focusing on the echoing sensations or she was going to be sick.

She stood and looked around at the other ghosts, who had all once again stopped what they were doing to stare at her. They reminded her of gory little puppies, with their heads tilted curiously while watching her.

She looked down at her hands and closed her eyes. Focusing she tapped into the power surging in her son. His main power was a lot like that brother of his, Ben, in that he was kind of a portal. He could draw from the energy fields of the living and the dead, and act as a portal for the dead. With a little more (real) training she was sure he would be able to tap into both energies and unlock a whole new set of psychic abilities.

She focused on the portal now, picturing it opened and shooing the dead through it and onto the other side, concentrating hard on remaining on this side of the portal herself. Now that she understood how to find it she was sure she could make her way back to it once her son was safe.

With the ghosts taken care of, she sat serenely on top of the marble coffin in the centre of the silent crypt and closed her eyes. She reached into herself until she found Klaus’ consciousness and pulled him close.

Klaus, for his part, felt like he was dreaming. In his dream, he was warm and safe and loved. He was being held by a woman who looked just like him and told him her name was Annalise. He listened to her tell him about her childhood and how, after freaking out, she had embraced the idea of having a child with open arms only to die after giving birth. She told him she had guided Grace to the name ‘Klaus’ and that she’d been with him since the start. She shushed him when he started to cry and apologize for everything she had seen him do, telling him she would always love him and always be proud.

They talked softly for an hour or so and then just existed together for a while until the heavy mausoleum door was pushed open.

“Tell me Number Four, have you made any progress tonight?” The old man demanded when he opened the door, before pausing. He clearly had not been prepared to find Klaus sitting on a coffin and smiling.

Annalise felt the way Klaus retreated deeper into his own mind when the man said his name and felt the smile fall from her lips.

_Sir Reginald Hargreeves._

World’s Worst Father and her Least Favourite Person was standing in front of her.

A new, menacing, grin found it’s way onto her face. This could be fun!

She watched Reginald’s face light up bright blue as she tapped into the powers her baby possessed. The look on his face when she levitated in front of him was almost as amazing as the look on his face when she used Klaus’ untapped telekinesis to pin the man to the wall.

“ _Sir Reginald Hargreeves..._ ” She spat his name, laughing a bit when he flinched at the otherworldly aspect to her voice. “I would say it’s a pleasure to meet you but it’s really not.” She back up and let him collapse to the floor in a heap.

“Who are you?” He exclaimed, rushing to get to his feet and brush himself off. “See Number Four! I told you! If you stopped being so stubborn and cowardly you would be able to do great things!”

“Cowardly?” She screamed. “My son is not a coward! Do you know what he sees? Do you know what he’s had to deal with since he was barely able to walk?” She let her anger engulf her and used the power it gave her to draw in as many gruesome ghosts as she could. She poured as much energy into them as she was able, watching with grim satisfaction as the old man’s eye widened in fear at the grotesque figures that surrounded them. Just as quickly as she pulled them in she banished them, the ice cold temperature the only sign that they had even been there.

“My son was a child and you locked him in cold dark rooms and forced him to deal with angry spirits before he was ready. He had no idea what was happening! How was he supposed to know how to deal with his powers without someone to properly guild him? There are plenty of real psychics and mediums out there – you could have had any of them come to teach him how to deal with his gifts!”

“He and the others are meant to save the world! How are they supposed to do that if they can’t do something as simple as control themselves?” Reginald replied, rather annoyed that a woman he had never met was telling him how to train his children. Did she not get that they never could have been normal kids? They were meant for much greater things.

“Save the _**world**_?” She yelled, throwing her hands up. “They were children – they weren't supposed to be doing anything but playing and messing around and learning how to read and write! You stole their childhoods from them!” The longer she yelled the more she glowed and all the tombs in the walls shook. “You never treated him the way he deserved to be treated! He deserves so much better than what you gave him and the others! You should be glad that I’ve never been able to manifest physically before or I would have killed you years ago!”

She surged forward and pinned him to the wall again, this time with her bare hands instead of the telekinesis. She felt his pulse thundering under her fingertips and watched as the blue glow around her seemed to be drawing from his life force. She held him there until his grip on her arms weakened before dropping him again and stepping back.

She hated this. Hated that she couldn’t just kill him and be done with it. But she could hear her little boy’s voice telling her not to – begging her not to. Not only was her boy scared of being haunted by the man he called a father, but he was also scared of what would happen to him and his siblings if their father died. Sure he was pretty self-sufficient (God she hated that he considered selling himself for money and a place to sleep as being self-sufficient) but he was scared of what would happen if the rest of them got put into foster care. Grace and Pogo were great and all, but a robot and a chimpanzee could not legally take care of a group of teenagers, no matter how human-like they both were.

She paced for a few minutes until she calmed down while the man coughed and pulled himself back together. By the time she felt a little less murderous and he looked less dishevelled she was starting to feel the pull of Klaus’ mind. She knew that whether or not he wanted to he would be taking over his body again soon.

“You’re going to take him home and have his arms treated and then you’re going to tell him that he won’t be training in here anymore.” She told the man in a tone that left no room for argument, crowding him against the wall. “Training him like this is doing nothing but straining and traumatizing him! He’s never going to be able to reach his full potential if you keep doing things that make him afraid to embrace every part of himself.”

She backed up and away from the man, feeling a little light headed. “I swear on my son's life that if you ever throw him in here again I will end you.”

Before the man could even think to respond Klaus' body dropped to the floor and the blue light faded, leaving them in the pitch black.

~

The next thing Klaus knew he was being lifted out of the backseat of Reginald’s car by Grace. He had never felt so tired or drained after spending time in the mausoleum, and he couldn’t remember what had happened between him being locked away and him getting home but the back of his head was rather tender.

Reginald looked uneasy when Klaus spoke to him, and after telling him that he had sustained a minor head injury while in the mausoleum the man had left.

Grace told him that it wasn’t unusual to forget the events leading up to a head injury so he shrugged off the feeling that he was forgetting something important and let himself be tucked into bed.

~

It wouldn’t be until years later, after being shot in the head by time travelling assassins and having God herself put him back together, that he would finally remember what happened that night.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a kudos and/or a comment telling me if you liked this!


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